Toledo’s assets need to be touted

4/13/2013

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Toledo’s precious assets, including its labor force, its well-known art museum, zoo, and symphony, and its excellent transportation, should be marketed at the world’s largest trade fair (“Delegates upbeat over interest shown in Toledo; Other Ohio cities networking at trade fair,” April 12).

We should have sent Toledo City Councilman Joe McNamara to Germany to see whether Mayor Mike Bell’s trip was a vacation at taxpayers’ expense, as he said. He most likely would change his mind about the worthiness of the trip, if he could forget his political ambitions.

With Toledo in the fiscal shape it is in, why are Mayor Bell and some of his staff trekking off to Germany? I don’t believe it is to better the business climate of our city. Where are the amenities from the mayor’s China visits?

The streets in my area are a disaster. I worry about the beating my car takes from potholes.

Let’s fix up our city so we can be proud, and then go looking for investors who will be proud with us.

JO MIZER

Barstow Avenue

Agencies need to act on watersheds

Thank you for your informative article about a major threat to our region’s natural resources (“Trouble in the wind; Putting turbines near the lake energizes debate,” March 31). Who’s doing all of the heavy lifting? A small local nonprofit conservation organization, Black Swamp Bird Observatory, for which I serve on the board of trustees.

There ought to be a moratorium on near-lakeshore construction of wind turbines, as your article states, “until a current radar study of avian descent and ascent paths into the shoreline is completed.” But the Ohio National Guard chooses to continue one of those interminable environmental analyses that bureaucrats specialize in.

Meanwhile, state and federal elected officials — Gov. John Kasich, U.S. Sens. Sherrod Brown and Rob Portman, and U.S. Rep. Bob Latta among them — don’t seem to be interested in forcing the hand of agencies such as the National Guard and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which should be ordered by President Obama to separate the Great Lakes and Mississippi River watersheds.

So agencies such as the Guard and the Corps fiddle while Rome burns.

KEVIN JOYCE

Sylvania

Progressives back shared prosperity

David L. Brooks is mistaken in his March 21 op-ed column, “Progressives clueless on prosperity.” The point that progressives get and Mr. Brooks refuses to see is that prosperity is most genuine when is it broadly shared by society as a whole, not monopolized by a few.

This is why progressives call us back to the 1950s, when higher taxes on the wealthiest were accepted by most people. The principle is simple: People with the highest incomes, and most profitable corporations, can afford to pay the highest tax rates. Those who earn less can manage lower rates, so no one has too much or too little to pay.

The idea is still alive in the phrase “the common good.” To progressives, that means better quality in public schools and other services, such as roads without tolls, utilities without high profits, food that is safe, clothing and housing without health risks, and towns and cities with decently paid and equipped public safety workers. These conditions did not exist before the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Progressives believe in shared prosperity with living wages, so that a spouse could stay at home with children. Through shared prosperity there would be less poverty, disease, and pollution, which are caused by the heedless pursuit of money driven by greed.

GEORGE MARSH

Tiffin

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